Golden pipes, Max Bielfeldt, stupid Cubs fans and bowl games

After taking off the past two Thursdays because of the holidays — even though the actual holidays were on Saturdays — Markley & Luciano are back on the air this week, and I was back in the Max 102 studio with them for the 2 Up & 2 Down, Y2K.11 edition. …

1 Up — The Homeless Recovering Drunk Golden Voice Guy. His name is Ted Williams, which I find funny. Homeless Golden Voice and the Splendid Splinter have the same name. Anyway, 10 years ago, this is a newspaper story read by the customers of the Columbus Dispatch and Internet users who cruised that site. Today, because the newspaper reporter carries a video camera and could show people the man in motion and let them hear his voice in its pure bass glory … Williams is an international viral video star and has a job offer on the table from the Cleveland Cavaliers, plus NFL Films wants to talk to him. And the guy seemed to spend half the morning on the NBC Today Show. It’s a wonderful story. Here’s hoping Williams cleans up his life for good, because he has some serious pipes.

1 Down — This is what happens when your baseball team hasn’t won anything significant in 100 years: You use the occasion of a 2-year-old’s birthday party to beat the hell out of the fan of a rival team. Let’s see if I have this straight. Three adult male Cubs fans were arguing with one adult male White Sox fan, and the argument escalated. The Cubs fans won the fight, but lost in court. One got a six-month jail sentence for punching the Sox fan repeatedly. Another got three years for kicking the Sox fan in the head and ultimately blinding him in one eye. The third guy — I love this — is on the lam (“remains a fugitive,” according to the Chicago Sun-Times account). Wait, there’s more to this. The parents of the 2-year-old apparently are divorced, because the miscreants are described as “former brother-in-law” and “brother of former brother-in-law” and such. One of the assailants was the 2-year-old birthday girl’s father. The kicker and the kickee were both “Uncle Bob,” from different sides of the family. So Uncle Bob kicked the eye out of the other Uncle Bob for being a Sox fan. Lovely. You invite adults to a 2-year-old’s party and who acts like the 2-year-olds? The grownups, of course. Happy birthday, kid. “Hey, Mom! That’s not a cherry on my ice cream, it’s Uncle Bob’s eyeball!”

2 Up — Max Bielfeldt and the Peoria Notre Dame boys basketball team. For the first time in their history, the Irish are ranked No. 1 in the state, in Class 3A. The star is the 6-feet-8 Bielfeldt, who, as my colleague Greg Stewart reports here, increases his c0llege-prospect stock every time he takes the court. There appears to be some guarded interest in Bielfeldt now from BCS types, who remain concerned about how high his ceiling is. He’s undersized for a BCS-level post, and a little slow and blah, blah, blah. But he is a very skilled, smart player with good size, and he should have a very nice college career. Several years ago, when Bradley signed Daniel Ruffin, who was neglected by the big-name schools because he was “too small.” I wrote then that he was the type of player you see every March, playing point for a mid-major team and running circles around big-name schools in a so-called “Cinderella” special. Well, guess who was the point guard for Bradley when the Braves beat Kansas and Pitt to reach the 2006 NCAA Sweet 16? Yup. Bielfeldt is a bigger player at a different position, but I have the same feeling about him: He’s the kind of guy who, as a college junior and senior we’re likely to be watching on television in March, cutting up big-name players and teams in the tournament.

2 Down — Don’t you love the buildup to the big BCS Championship Bowl game on Monday night (which I must point out is Jan. 10)? Tonight, we have the GoDaddy.com showdown between Middle Tennessee and Miami Ohio-style. Also this weekend, before we get to the big one, are the Cotton Bowl, which is no longer played in the Cotton Bowl, plus the BBVA Compass Bowl and the Fight Hunger Bowl. Meanwhile, all the gas has gone out of what used to be the greatest single day of college football in the universe every year: New Year’s Day. Who cares anymore?

Author: Kirk Wessler

Kirk Wessler is executive sports editor/columnist and has worked at the Journal Star since 1987. A graduate of Bradley University, he previously worked at the Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune and Dallas Times-Herald. Wessler's work has won numerous awards from Associated Press Sports Editors, U.S. Basketball Writers Association, Illinois Press Association and Illinois Associated Press. He is former president of the USBWA. Follow him on Twitter @KirkWessler.
View all posts by Kirk Wessler

What might be your solution to the bowl dilemma? If you say playoff, I’m with you all the way. But the explosion of bowl games has a lot to do with exposure. If you are school not in a BCS conference, you have no chance to win a national championship under the current system. Therefore, you have to gain exposure through the bowl system where you try to get into games that can show off your university, preferably against a big name school. Now even that is disappearing. Of the 35 bowl games, only 6 feature games between a BCS school and a non-AQ school. The non-AQ schools are 3-2 so far with one to play this weekend. If there were a playoff system with each conference guaranteed at least one entrant, then exposure could be had that way and the bowl system could go the way of the dinosaur.

If there were a playoff, I agree that it ought to assure inclusion of a team from each conference. But that would mean 11 auto bids, so you’re talking a 16-team bracket and four weeks — a 16-game schedule for the finalists. Tough sell to the presidents, who would be much more amenable to eight teams and three weeks. But you have to understand, the BCS schools rule the decision-making process, and they have zero interest in giving opportunity to anyone but themselves — primarily because that means sharing revenue with more schools.

That’s why there will be no playoff with NCAA involvement. The BCS schools will never go for it if the NCAA receives a cut or has any say in where the revenue goes.

I would prefer the old, smaller, condensed bowl schedule to what we have now. Why should 6-6 teams be bowl eligible? Or even a 7-5 team? The notion that the bowl games increase exposure for the non-BCS teams is misguided. Nobody watches most of these bowls. The only ones that are good for exposure are the ones where a non-BCS team gets a crack at a top-tier BCS team. Nobody cares that Nevada is playing Boston College in the Fight Hunger Bowl.

If they’re not going to have a true playoff, I would much rather see all bowl play end on New Year’s Day. Return to having conference champions committed to particular bowls; give them the best available opponent. Then over the course of a day — or even two, if you spread it out over NY Eve and Day — people sit down and watch a bunch of good teams in compelling matchups … and then decide for themselves and argue over who’s better. And get rid of half the bowls.

I understand that a playoff system will never happen because three or four conference presidents have decided it won’t happen. But doesn’t it seem fundamentally unfair to have a system, either the old or new one, where many teams can’t win a national title? As it is currently constructed, no team from the MAC (for example my beloved NIU Huskies) can ever win a national title in football. This is not true in any other sport. You will never have a George Mason in football. Instead you will get national champs from one of four conferences who have bought a title, in some cases literally bought the title (see USC and Ohio St., and in a year or two we will have Auburn as an example). A MAC team is literally playing the whole season to get to go to the GoDaddy.com Bowl or the Humanitarian Bowl or the Little Ceasars Bowl. If we go back to the old system, those bowls are gone and you never see a MAC team unless they run the table for the season.

Don’t get me wrong I love the fact that Ted Williams is using his Gift. I think the better story is that we all have Gifts from God and when we utilize them they will make room for us just like the Guy with the Golden Voice. Learn Your Gift Today: http://www.MilestoneMotivation.com/gifts